Seanad debates

Tuesday, 18 December 2018

Social Welfare, Pensions and Civil Registration Bill 2018: Report and Final Stages

 

12:30 pm

Photo of Regina DohertyRegina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator will have to excuse me for being confused. In my head, I am hearing two separate issues here which do not relate to each other. If I am answering the wrong one, I ask the Senator to give me the nod. On the public consultations on total contributions, not a single decision has been made, not one. If we arrive at 30 years with ten years' credits, it will be because we have deliberated on all the submissions that have been made and found that to be the best option. If we arrive at 40 years with 20 years' credits, it will be because the submissions have guided us. Not one submission has been read by me. Not one ounce of work has been done collectively in the Department to determine what the next generation of the total contributions model of pensions payments is going to look like. The purpose of the public consultation was to gather all the different opinions. The Senator has expressed hers and we have got hundreds of submissions under the public consultation. All that is to determine the best and fairest approach for the people. It will only apply to those who retire after 2020. The people who retired after 2012 are not affected by the proposed changes for 2020. They are being adjudicated under the current system, which is as fair as it potentially can be. It is the 30 years, not 40 years. It is the system with the ten years credit. Those who were adversely affected by the 2012 changes, which we have changed in this legislation, will be getting their payments next year. That is an interim model which will not determine what the new model will be and is not reflective of the old model. It is a bit of the old model and a bit of the new model, and people are happy with it. I think I told the House previously that approximately 70% of the people who were affected by the changes in the rates of 2012 will see their pension increase to a full pension come January, February or March of next year.

The Senator is asking me to do a report on the basis of an outcome that has not yet been reached. I do not wish to be disrespectful to her. We are in a deliberative process and have not completed it. We have not determined what the new model of total contributions is going to look like. The Senator obviously has decided in her head that we have determined what it is going to look like. On that basis she wants me to do a report so she can prove to me that it should be something other than what she thinks I think it is going to be.We have not decided whether it will be ten years credits, 20 years credits or 30 years for total contributions for a full pension, or 40 years for total contributions for a full pension. That deliberative process will be determined by the submissions that have been made. There were hundreds of them, but the issue has not been determined yet. Not only do I not have the money to do what the Senator is asking me to do, I do not have the staff to carry out an analysis that she believes will feed into something. I have not made a decision yet.

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